


no chance no way

by thisstableground



Series: ITH main timeline [10]
Category: In the Heights - Miranda/Hudes
Genre: Cute, F/M, Humor, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed, it's a classic trope and i won't hear a word against it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24277627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: Bad enough Vanessa's been dragged along to a wedding she doesn't care about, but now the hotel's messed up her room booking, too.
Relationships: Usnavi/Vanessa (In the Heights)
Series: ITH main timeline [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1070721
Comments: 26
Kudos: 52





	no chance no way

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I will not apologize for this, everyone loves a Whoops We Have To Share a Bed story, except Vanessa who is having a fantastically awkward time.

“I think it’s romantic,” Carla insists.

Dani makes a disparaging noise, waving her scissors in the air for emphasis. “Romantic? They’ve known each other for ten minutes. And that man has fallen in love more times than Usnavi’s made café con leche. You know this the fifth time he’s been engaged?”

“Only the second wedding though!” Carla falls into the nearest salon chair, spinning a dreamy half-circle and holding the invitation up to the light. “Oh, I always _love_ a destination wedding.”

“Just because it has island in the name does not make Long Island a destination wedding. Makes it un dolor de cabeza having to close the salon down for a whole Saturday. And at least have the decency to go somewhere sunny if I have to get a hotel.”

“Well, Piraguero’s sham wedding ain’t gettin’ no complaints from me,” Vanessa interjects. “If the salon’s closed, I’m gonna spend the weekend doing a whole load of nothing for once in my life.”

Dani, on the warpath with the injustice of having to lose a full day of business, points at Vanessa. “Oh, are you? I seem to remember _you_ got an invite too.”

“Only ‘cause everyone in the world did! I barely know the guy, it took me twenty minutes to figure out who the hell Antonio even was when I read it.”

“Tonio has been making piragua for this town before you were so much as an idea in God’s mind _,_ chiquita, he’s a very old friend and you should show some respect. We’re _all_ going, sham or no.” Dani looks around to check for eavesdroppers and confides, “anyway, I heard he invited his first wife and hasn’t told the new one about it yet. You really want to miss seeing that?”

“But-“

“If you come to the wedding,” she concludes in a magnanimous tone, “I won’t count it against your vacation time.”

Vanessa clicks her tongue. Put that way, it’s almost tempting. And Dani will have it out for her if she doesn’t agree. “You got a deal.”

“Perfecto!” Dani claps her hands, sugar-sweet once more now she's got her way. “There’s a hotel near the venue on the invite, we better book in quick before it fills up.”

“You can get a room with me and Dani if you want, Vanessa,” Carla offers.

“Hell no! If I really have to go then I ain’t sharing no bed with nobody,” Vanessa says.

***

Vanessa categorically does not give half a shit about the wedding part of weddings but nonetheless she’s been looking forward to it. A vacation’s a vacation, even if it’s only in a cheap hotel an hour from home stuffed full of obscure relatives of their friendly neighborhood piraguero and his bride-to-be. All Vanessa was hoping for was the free dinner at the wedding, a double bed to herself and a couple nights away from her mom. Maybe a bathtub. Free tiny shampoos if she’s really lucky. So she wasn’t expecting big things but she was, bare minimum, expecting an actual room.

“Hurry it up, some of us are waitin’ to check in here!” someone yells from the back of the rapidly-growing line behind her at the hotel’s front desk.

“Hey, shove it up your ass, pal!” she shouts back, and then turns back to the receptionist who looks like she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Look, can you just check one more time? I have the confirmation email right here and everything.”

“I’m really sorry, Miss García, there musta been a problem with the system,” the receptionist says. She hits the side of the monitor lightly. “Damn thing’s always messing up. We’ll refund your deposit but there’s no more vacant rooms today. We should have a few opening up tomorrow?”

“But where am I supposed to sleep _tonight?_ ” she says. Okay, it isn’t that far to go back to Manhattan if she has to, but everyone else is gonna be here and there’s basically a whole restaurant booked out for the night and the only thing worse than partying on Long Island is _not_ partying on Long Island when everyone else you know is.

“Could you...stay with one of the other wedding guests?”

What kind of solution is _that_?! But it’s probably not this girl’s fault their computer’s busted and she’s already gonna have to deal with all the increasingly impatient people waiting behind her, which seems like enough karma, so Vanessa just resignedly says, “you can definitely get me a room for tomorrow?”

The receptionist nods. “If you come down first thing I’ll check you in.”

“Fine, cool. I’ll do that. Thanks.“ She goes off to sulk at Dani who is standing off to one side in the lobby grimacing sympathetically at her. “Guess i’ll just have to crash with you guys. Shotgun the bed near the window.”

“Oh no no no, you made your choice,” Dani says. “Our room wasn’t good enough for you before, don’t think you can come crawling back now.”

“What? _Dani!_ Come on!”

“I’m kidding, linda, but there really is no space,” she says. “We’ve already got Claudia staying on the other bed and Tonio asked if we could fit his cousin in last minute, we’re bursting at the seams.”

“So kick this cousin out! You don’t even know who she is!”

Dani gives her a disapproving look. “Why don’t you just stay with Nina?”

“She’s in with her parents. This weekend’s already gone to shit, I do not need to know what Kevin Rosario’s pajamas look like on top of that.”

Usnavi and Carla come up beside them. Carla drops her overstuffed backpack on the ground with a relieved sigh and Usnavi grins at everyone, tossing his key card from one hand to another.

“Woooh, long check-in line or what?” he says. “How are all you lovely ladies doing? Excited for our luxury accommodations?” He spins in a circle with his arms out wide. Vanessa scowls at him and makes a noise that very clearly says _I hate this place and everyone in it_.

“Is that a good _hmm_ or a bad _hmm_?” he asks.

“Ignórala, Usnavi,” Dani tells him. “She’s just cranky because they gave her room to someone else.”

Carla puts both her hands over her mouth, as though it’s the worst news she’s ever heard. “¡No! Did they give you a new one?

“No,” Vanessa says. “They’re ‘full’, _apparently_.”

Usnavi shakes his head. “This whole place was booked out weeks ago. I tried to switch mine to a single when Sonny said he couldn’t make it but no luck, I’m stuck paying for a twin.”

Carla giggles. “Ain’t that funny _,_ Vanessa don’t have a bed and you have too many!”

“Sí, isn’t that _funny,”_ Dani says, staring at Usnavi and Vanessa like they are two lost children who have wandered into her gingerbread house, then she snaps her fingers. “¡Espera un minuto! Why doesn’t Vanessa just stay in your room, Usnavi!”

She does not phrase this as a question.

Usnavi goes, “hnnghh,” saying exactly what Vanessa is thinking.

Vanessa goes, “Da _ni_!”

“Unless you’ve got a better plan?” Dani smirks at her. “Kevin’s pajamas don’t sound so bad any more?”

“What,” Usnavi says.

“Dani!” Vanessa, who by now just wants nothing more than to leave this conversation as soon as humanly possible, pokes Usnavi between the shoulder blades. “C’mon then, Usnavi, vamonos.”

Rallying quick around the sudden change in circumstances, Usnavi leads the way and on reaching the room, he opens the door and holds it for her, bowing deeply like he’s a butler. Vanessa does a dignified little curtsy in return before she enters, then stops.

“I thought you said this was a twin room,” she says, pointing accusingly at the bed. The _only_ bed, double, mocking them from the centre of the room.

Usnavi joins her to stare, like if they look at it hard enough it’ll magically turn into two singles. “I thought it _was_. Pero... I mean, I put on the site that two people were staying, I didn’t really check the details too close, since it wouldn’ta mattered if it was me and Sonny sharing...” He makes a mortified, pleading face. “Mierda. I swear I thought it was two beds or I woulda said, I wasn’t tryna be sneaky or nothin’.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she says, softening a little because Usnavi doesn’t have the kind of subtlety to play weird games like that. “Shit. Now what do we do?”

With a cheerful shrug, Usnavi says, “looks like I’m sleeping on the floor! “

“Really?” She wrinkles her nose down at the ground. “I don’t know how often they vacuum this.”

Usnavi pushes the worn carpet with his sneaker toe. “Cinco stars! I dig it.”

The polite thing, Vanessa knows, is to argue that he should take the bed, but that does increase the chances of _her_ sleeping on the floor instead, which she really doesn’t want to do. She nods gratefully instead, tosses her bag down on the bed, and texts Nina with a friendly update that this is already the worst vacation anyone has ever had, that this stupid wedding is clearly doomed, and that she will never buy a fucking piragua again.

***

Dinner and drinks wasn’t the distraction Vanessa wanted it to be, since some _so-called people_ who she won’t name spent the whole time making knowing faces at her and Usnavi while cackling, but at least wasn’t the tangible awkwardness of the hotel room now that they’re facing a whole night alone together. Vanessa takes her sweet time in the tiny en-suite bathroom, brushing her teeth and removing her makeup and agonizing over whether to run the faucet while she uses toilet to cover the sound or if that’s even more conspicuous than just peeing. After a moment of profound gratitude that she bothered to bring some clothes to sleep in, she gets changed and has finally run out of ways to procrastinate going to the bedroom.

Usnavi is sitting on the godforsaken double bed playing on his phone when she emerges, and without looking up he shuffles across to make more space in a way that she takes to mean _you can sit here too_. Vanessa does, slowly like she’s expecting a trap. Something feels so _private_ about this, like she’s only just discovered after knowing him her whole life that there’s an Usnavi who exists outside of the bodega, Usnavi with his bare feet crossed at the ankles and no hat, the slope of his shoulders in his tank top illuminated gold by the lamp. Usnavi who isn’t chattering away, just sitting quietly on the bed next to Vanessa in her gym shorts and an oversized t-shirt that used to be Nina’s but which she suddenly recalls might have been Usnavi’s before that, without her makeup on, and her white socks are a permanently dusty grey on the bottom from wear. These are things she never even knew she didn’t need anyone to know about her.

She starts brushing her hair mostly for something to do that means she isn’t looking at him. He doesn’t say anything until she starts putting her hair up and his eyes flicker to the movement of her hands.

“Do you always wear it like that?” he asks with interest. “Ain’t it uncomfortable sleeping on a braid?”

“No? I’m used to it,” she says. “Makes life easier. Try having this much hair to detangle in the morning and you’ll see what I mean.”

Usnavi laughs. “I think I’ll stick with what I got.” He indicates his own hair which as always is unremarkably dark and straight and short, with something approximating bangs falling down haphazardly over his forehead.

“I swear you’ve gotten the same haircut every time you come into the salon since I started working there,” she tells him.

“Hey, if it ain’t broke. You know I’m practically fighting the ladies off with this look.” He makes a vague kung-fu gesture while Vanessa obligingly pretends to swoon. “Sometimes I think about trying something new. I dunno, maybe a fade or a mohawk or something? But it’s like, what’s the point if I always wear a hat?”

“If you do ever want to go a little crazy there’s always an open chair at the salon.” Vanessa ties off her braid and gives it a rueful tug. “Keep it short though, this is more trouble than it’s worth. I’d get it all cut off if Dani wouldn’t throw a fit.”

“You’d look beautiful either way,” Usnavi says and it should sound like such a line but he’s so earnest that she finds herself totally disarmed, smiling at him. He smiles back and neither of them say anything until Vanessa’s starting to panic because why hasn’t one of them stopped this horrific smile vortex they’ve fallen into but then thank god Usnavi coughs and says, “well, floor ain’t gettin’ no softer!”

He grabs a pillow and sideways rolls off the bed with it, pulling his jacket over himself like a blanket when he reaches ground level.

“Comfy?” Vanessa asks.

“Never been better,” he says, taking out his phone again. “Buenas noches, Vanessa.”

“Night, Usnavi,” she answers and turns the lamp out.

***

The puddle of low white-blue light from Usnavi's phone is still glowing when Vanessa opens her eyes after almost an hour of not sleeping and quietly fuming. The only reason she came to this damn wedding was for the hotel room, and nice as Usnavi has been it just ain’t the same sharing. And that starts her thinking about how technically she just invited herself to his room, and now she’s sleeping in _his_ bed and grouching to herself about not having her own space, while he’s all optimism even though he's definitely got the worse end of the stick. She can hear that he’s awake, jacket rustling as he readjusts his position yet again with an almost-silent huff of discomfort. She sighs too and says, “sleep up here, if you want.”

“¿Qué?” he says, popping into visibility. “No, this is great!”

“Usnavi, it’s the fucking floor.”

“I mean, it’s—“ he wobbles his head around thoughtfully. The way he’s only head and shoulders visible over the side of the bed makes him look like a Muppet. “You’re definitely cool with sharing? I really don’t mind staying down here if you ain’t.”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” Like, you can never be 100% about anyone but she’s as sure as it ever gets that Usnavi isn’t the kind of guy to try something. Just in case, she clarifies, “don’t take that as no kinda invitation, though, you know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, yeah, _no_! I wasn’t gonna— hands inside the vehicle at all times, prometo.”

He gets into bed beside her, trying to keep as much space between them as he can. If she’d hoped that alleviating some of her guilt would make the night go by any easier she was wrong. Now she’s just extremely aware of how actually a double bed really isn’t all that big once you get two people in it. And it shouldn’t come as this much of a surprise to her that Usnavi is not a restful person. He twitches and shuffles and wiggles and cracks his fingers several times while Vanessa tries to passive-aggressively lie as statue-still as possible in the hopes he’ll get the point, which he does not.

His elbow bumps against her arm, and he yells “oh god I’m sorry!” and rolls away so fast he almost falls off the bed.

“Alright, calm the fuck down, I think we both still got our purity,” she reassures him.

"Sorry."

“Do you apologize this much to every girl you get in bed with?”

She can literally hear the sound of his brain shutting down at that. In lieu of a response he does a full 360 roll over in place, so she adds, “you cannot take this long to get to sleep every night.”

“Sometimes I take longer!” he says brightly.

“Great.”

“Cut me a break, I ain’t used to sharing,” he says, catching her tone. “And besides I don't usually— _uh_. Um. Uh, never mind!”

Preemptively offended in case he was about to criticize her as a bedmate – the _hypocrisy!_ When he’s the one making all the noise! – Vanessa frowns and pushes herself up on her elbows. “What?”

“¡Nada, nada! Dios mío, is that the time, I’m tired, are you tired? Wow, and we got a busy day tomorrow, time to hit the hay and-“

“What were you gonna say?”

“Vanessa, it’s really nothing.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

“Well,” he says, dryly self-conscious as he turns to raise an eyebrow at her, “ _you_ try finding a way to say ‘I don’t usually sleep in jeans’ without it sounding like I’m anglin’ to take them off.”

“Ohhh.” Alarmingly and without any intervention from her own sense of judgement she says, “but you’re wearing something underneath, right?”

Usnavi says, “... yyyyeees?”, shifts his weight and then more decisively repeats “yes.” She suspects he was double-checking. Both of them lie there for approximately three eternities contemplating the fact that she just asked him if he was freeballing it in bed with her. She wonders if it’s too late for her to go sleep in the lobby, or maybe to go back in time and persuade her mom to live in Philadelphia so that she never has to meet Usnavi De la Vega and his underwear to begin with.

Very slowly, Usnavi moves one leg, trying to adjust his other pant leg with his foot. He slips and kicks Vanessa, who snaps, “oh, just take them off already!”

 _“Aghh_ ,” Usnavi says, sounding horrified, either at the request or the furious tone she said it in. Vanessa can appreciate that it might be an unnerving thing to have snapped at you.

She tries to make herself sound kinder. She’s just tired and irritable, but that’s no reason to be a dick when he’s just trying to be thoughtful. “Look, dude, this ain’t ideal for either of us. But sleeping in jeans sucks, and sleeping on the floor sucks. We’re both mature adults, you got boxers on and I ain’t gonna fuckin’ faint if I see your kneecaps during the night so we’ll just stay on our own sides of the bed and maybe we can get through this with a few hours of actual sleep, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, tentatively. She can hear him undo his belt and then pause again. “Are you sure? You’re sure? Bueno. Gracias.”

 _I am in bed with a guy who is thanking me for giving him permission to take his pants off and it’s the least sexy thing that has ever happened to me,_ Vanessa thinks despairingly, as Usnavi’s legs make abstract shapes under the duvet before he discards his jeans out the side of it. He’s still pretty fidgety after that but significantly less so, at least enough that Vanessa can tune it out and finally drift off.

***

Vanessa wakes up in the suspended confusion of coming to consciousness somewhere unfamiliar, and even stranger, with _someone_ unfamiliar. None of the guys from the club have ever stayed at hers for so much as a nap, never mind long enough to steal the sheets and press their freezing feet against her leg.

Usnavi’s here, she sluggishly recalls. This knowledge does not make the situation any less weird.

She could go back to sleep but instead she sits up to look at him, drowsily fascinated: if she had ever taken the time before now to consider what Usnavi looked like when he’s sleeping she would’ve put money on him being the kind of person to sprawl all over the bed on his back, probably snoring, definitely taking up all the space. Big personality, big sleeper, right?

But aside from his wandering feet, he’s stayed entirely on his own side as promised, hair and elbows and skinny arms all in a pile of softly messy angles, curled up small on his side with his hands in gentle fists up by his face and the knuckles of one hand just lightly resting on his lips. Something about the position makes her want to laugh, not because it’s funny but only because now she’s seeing it, it makes perfect sense.

The sheets are all tangled around his knees. Vanessa carefully tries to extricate them without actually touching him. It’s hard to tell in the dark but she thinks that he might be wearing boxers the exact shade of red as all of his shirts, and finds herself pausing to confirm for just long enough that the embarrassment can _really_ hit like a truck when she finally thinks about just where her eyes are fixed. She tugs the sheets away harder than she means to and lies down hurriedly with her back to Usnavi and her face burning hot.

“I wasn’t _looking_ ,” she thinks frantically at an imaginary version of Dani who is laughing her entire ass off. “I was just...looking.”

Usnavi makes a breathy noise. As an apology for accidentally creeping on him, and for ruining his night in general, Vanessa shakes some of the newly-freed sheet out over both of them. Then, after a moment of arguing with herself, she sits up and pulls it down properly on his side so that it covers up his feet too. Only because she doesn’t want him shoving them against her leg when they’re cold again, and for no other reason at all.

***

It’s late enough now that Vanessa can tell without opening her eyes that the sun is up. She feigns sleep as Usnavi goes through his bag in a way he probably intends to be quiet and is six times louder as a result. He swears fervently at himself as the bathroom door slips out of his grip and slams. Vanessa laughs under her breath. Against all odds, she feels pretty well rested, but she still dozes a while longer to the intrusive but not unpleasant sound of a running shower and soft singing coming from the bathroom.

***

They all meet up in the lobby in the morning where Vanessa ignores the manically thrilled looks on Nina and Dani’s faces to inform Usnavi, “I got another room, I’ll come get my stuff after breakfast. Thanks for letting me stay.”

“Yeah, you’re such a gentleman, _Usnavi_ ,” Nina says, nudging him hard and then scooting behind Abuela so he can’t retaliate. If she grins any harder her face will fall off, and Vanessa won’t even send her a sympathy card.

“And how did we all sleeeep?” Dani sings meaningfully. Vanessa desperately needs new friends.

“Usnavi moves around too much,” she grouches, without thinking.

“How do you know that?” Carla asks, perfectly innocent as everyone else’s eyes stare into Vanessa’s soul and say _, yes, Vanessa, how **do** you know that?_

“I’m a real restless sleeper, there’s people three rooms over saying ‘Usnavi moves around too much’,” Usnavi chimes in before Vanessa can dig herself any deeper. She’s so grateful for the bailout that she could kiss him except _of course she wouldn‘t ever._ “Bet she’ll be glad to have her own room tonight, right, Vanessa?”

“Ha!” Dani says.

Vanessa is very glad she’s getting her own room. But like, he was willing to sleep on the floor, and he wouldn’t let her pay him back half the room price when she offered, and he’s put on this dopily self-deprecating expression to take the heat off of her instead of telling the world they shared a bed, so she says, “there are worse people to spend a night with.” It gets her a piercingly smug look from Dani and suggestively jumping eyebrows from Nina and even Abuela is tittering knowingly, but she’ll take that fall because it also gets her a delighted smile from Usnavi. “Just don’t expect me to make a habit of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment if you liked it! <3


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